A Garden?

When I was little, the worst thing my mom could ask me to do was weed the flower beds.  Or do any yard work for that matter.  I used to try and make deals with my siblings to get them to do my section of the mowing!  But, now that I’m all grown up (ha) I up and planted a garden!  What?!  Every spring since we’ve lived in the house I get the urge to try my hand at planting something.  Up until now, it was a short lived and easily discouraged urge.  But 2 weeks ago I acted on the urge fast enough and now have the cutest little garden!  I basically have no idea what I’m doing, and it’ll be a miracle if we get anything from the garden worth eating, but it was fun!  And my kids LOVED doing it, and love to water it and can’t wait to have stuff grow (here’s hoping!!). 

Since I can’t act on any crazy idea with out my partner in crime, Cammie and her kids came over and helped!  It was way more fun than pulling weeds and mowing the lawn as a kid/teenager!  Maybe I really am grown up!  Here’s what we got:

Digging the hole was pretty hard!  It was hard to dig straight lines that were level enough for the boards to fit it all nice and perfect.  Luckily I am NOT a perfectionist…and we handled it!  Especially Briggs, he was a beast with the shovel!
Dan’s weight did nothin!  But he loved it!
Digging the hole was hard, but screwing the boards together turned out to be worse!!  I bought these special “outdoor” wood screws and they DID NOT LIKE US!  But we also handled that and ended up with a nice little box!  I read somewhere that putting cardboard down was a good idea, and since I read it, it must be true…so we did. (again, NO idea what I’m doing!!)
Once the dirt was in, Steve helped me measure…
Then, while I stapled down the string, the kids took turns hammering the staples all the way in.  I’m all about making it work baby!
Success!  How awesome are these kids?!!
Finally, it was time to plant…the moment Steve and Ali had been waiting for ALLLLLL day! Look at that concentration!
Steve preferred planting the seeds.  He rocked the seed planting!  And we only had one square that may or may not have twice as many seeds as necessary!
I have the BEST helpers!
Steve and Dan helped me do all the shopping and they loved helping pick out what seeds to plant.  Steve really wanted to plant dandilions, and since we have MORE than enough of those already, he settled for sunflowers!  (I know, that’s not what he’s holding here, but he was REALLY set on planting sunflowers!  So we did!)
Briggs stuck through this garden planting thing til the end!  Somewhere along the way, Jer lost interest and the babies took naps!
But the watering was a big hit!  Thanks to Ali’s super cute watering can!
And there you have it!  My little garden!  I hope it grows!!  In it we have 3 tomato plants, 3 pepper plants (red, yellow and orange), a square of cilantro, a square of lettuce, a square of spinach, 2 squares of squash, 2 squares of zucchini, a square of cucumbers, a square of strawberries, and a square of sunflowers!  Can you believe all that fit?!!  Since I really don’t know what I’m doing, I did do a little research and this is called the square foot gardening method.  And I’m pretty sure I did it right…!!
Thank you Cams for helping!!  We totally rock! ;)
And then the babies (who aren’t really babies anymore, but we still call them that!) woke up, and Cammie and Ben went on a date and the cousins got to play.  It was a good day.